A Mourning Knight

A carving in high relief which communicates deep emotion by gesture and pose.

The expressive hands clutching the cloak, the lowered visor, and the ungainly yet elegant posture can be found elsewhere in the work of this artist and the School of Munich. Perhaps part of a large Lamentation altar-retable and analogies with the figure of the Weeping Virgin at Munich as well as in 3 fragments of altar-piece in Berlin, both dated circa 1480.

Nominally inspired by Lucretius' De rerum natura, Piero di Cosimo's The Forest Fire takes its scientific subject and embellishes it with fantastical creatures from the artist's imagination: Bulls, bears, lions and deer-like creatures with human faces all flee wearily from a fire.

Rubens' portrait of Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel dates from about 1629. The Earl was a great collector, and Rubens had painted the earl's wife a few years earlier on a visit to Antwerp. This drawing in pen and ink with a chalk base is unusually informal, reflecting perhaps the comfortable relationship between artist and patron.